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Love/hate dances in yellow, blue and red

Maple Ridge dancer Rebecca Karpus will present her first dance show at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam on Aug. 29.

— image credit: DAVID COOPER

by
Janis Warren - The Tri-City News

posted Aug 18, 2014 at 11:00 AM

When it comes to making the most of time, Rebecca Karpus is the master.

In late spring, after graduating with her bachelor degree in performing arts from Capilano University and getting word she was accepted to the master’s program at SFU in September, Karpus decided to strike out with her first dance show.

“In between finishing school and starting again, I wanted to do something that I’ve been very, very passionate about in my life,” the Maple Ridge resident said. “It thought, ‘If it’s not now, I’m not quite sure when it will be.’ This is my time.”

A ballet instructor for The danceLAB in Coquitlam, Karpus recruited her cousin, Amanda Gillies, and Megan Wainman, with whom she has danced since a teen, to create original choreography for In Colour. She also hired Lindsay Warnock to compose the music.

In Colour, which will be presented on Aug. 29 at Coquitlam’s Evergreen Cultural Centre, centres around three dancers, each embodying the “personalities” of red, yellow and blue.

Red is associated with love, romance and fire while blue is quiet and reserved and yellow translates to happy and bright. The three colours are often seen together, especially in visual arts (the RYB model is a historical set of colours used in subtractive colour mixing).

Her choreography explores the colours’ relationship to one another on the stage while offering striking images. Karpus compared the colour triad to close friends: red is the fiery, tempermental character while blue is the sad soul and yellow is the friend with the cheery disposition.

Mixed together, there can be challenges, she said, “but they also bring out the best of emotions because they’re so different.”

• Tickets for In Colour at the Evergreen Cultural Centre (1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam) on Friday, Aug. 29 at 8 p.m. are $15 through eventbrite.ca.

jwarren@tricitynews.com

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